The gas industry is clearly worried that a vast majority of Australians believe there should be a 25% tax on gas exports. After decades of playing Australian governments for fools, the industry deserves to be worried that Australians and politicians across multiple parties have realised that Big Gas is taking the piss.
Fri 20 Mar 2026 20.00
Photo: AAP Image/Darren England
The gas industry is clearly worried that a vast majority of Australians believe there should be a 25% tax on gas exports.
After decades of playing Australian governments for fools, the industry deserves to be worried that Australians and politicians across multiple parties have realised that Big Gas is Taking the Piss.
In response to Australia Institute research that shows had the Albanese Government introduced a 25% tax on gas exports when it came to office in 2022, it would have raised $64 billion in revenue, the gas industry’s lobby group, Australian Energy Producers, has come out using all their old lines.
The problem for them is these lines have never stood up to scrutiny, but even worse for them, Australians now can see just how pathetically lame they are.
AEP, CEO Samantha McCulloch, has said today that as 25% tax on gas exports would “stop investment in new gas supply, leading to gas shortfalls, higher energy prices, and the closure of Australian industries that rely on reliable and affordable gas.”
And sorry, but no.
Australia has stonks of gas. Absolute stonks of it. There is a reason Australia along with the USA and Qatar is the biggest exporter of LNG in the world – we have stonks of gas.
Australia has so much gas that 83% of all the gas produced in Australia is exported or used to convert natural gas to LNG.
The size of Australia’s LNG exports is so huge that more gas is used to covert gas to LNG than is used by Australia’s entire manufacturing industry.
Australia not only has more than enough gas to meet Australians’ current needs, the Government’s own figures in its Future Gas Strategy released in 2024 shows that even when you count all the gas contracted for exports out to 2050, there is more than enough capacity to meet all of Australia’s domestic needs for the future.
As Australia Institute research found in 2024, the suggestion that “more gas-fired generation capacity is needed to facilitate the transition to a renewable grid, and that more gas production is required to address potential shortfalls.. is not supported by the Government’s own modelling—or the Future Gas Strategy itself.”
Despite Australia Institute research, and the Government’s figures showing that Australia doesn’t need more gas, we know the gas industry wants to be able to drill for more gas to export even more of it for massive profit.
The 25% gas export tax will not kill investment in the gas industry. The tax is modest relative to the taxation of oil and gas in Norway and Qatar – places where those industries have thrived.
The gas is here. Companies cannot move their plants elsewhere as can be the case with manufacturing.
As the past month has shown, Australia is a very good place to invest in gas: it is safe, secure, and with stable shipping routes.
Gas companies will continue to want to invest in more gas. The government should not approve more gas mines because we don’t need more gas and it is terrible for the climate.
But fears that a 25% gas export tax will end the industry is so silly as to be barely worth refuting.
Australians are already paying high prices for gas – all because of those same exports the gas industry is profiting from. Since the opening of the Gladstone LNG terminal in 2015, the domestic gas market has been linked to the world gas price.
This – as the Australia Institute warned back in 2014 – led directly to higher gas and electricity prices:
The 25% export tax will not change the world gas price, and because it is only a tax on exports it cannot increase the price Australians pay, because the tax on gas used by Australians will not change.
It is unfortunate for the gas industry and their lobbyists that Australians are realising that we are not getting a fair return on the massive profits being made from gas companies – especially during times of crisis such as we are seeing now.
But their talking points are just regurgitations of their old gaslighting strategy.
We know the gas industry does not want to produce gas for Australians.
Back in 2023, the AEP, CEO Samantha McCulloch told a Senate Committee that we shouldn’t even really count the LNG being exported from Queensland as part of Australia’s gas supply because “that gas was produced in large part because of plans to access the export market. Essentially, it wouldn’t have been produced without that export market there”.
All the gas industry wants to do is to drill for more gas and report it overseas for massive profits.
Australians deserve a fair return for the profits being made from our natural resources.
Once they are gone, we don’t get another chance.
When exports rise, Australians should expect to receive more tax revenue – this is what happens in Norway, Qatar and other oil and gas exporting nations. But in Australia, as LNG exports have soared, the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax has actually fallen.
The gas industry can complain all it likes, but Australians know they deserve better, and a 25% tax on gas exports would finally deliver a fair return to Australians for our resources.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it triggered something far less discussed in Australia: one of the biggest unplanned gas export profits in modern history. Gas prices spiked. Exporting companies made off like bandits. Australians failed to reap any benefit from our exported gas price spike
Advertisement
For years, the idea of properly taxing gas exports has been treated as politically untenable - something governments approached dismissively, if at all. But as global conflict pushes up energy prices and gas company profits surge, that dismissiveness is starting to look like negligence.
In February the unemployment rate rose from 4.1% to 4.3%, providing further evidence the Reserve Bank misread the economy when it raised rates in both February and this week.
